by Tom Clancy
Brigadier General Jack "the Knife" Perry, the 366th commander, looked at the map, and memories flooded back. For the first time in years, he desperately wanted a cigarette. "Thank you, Colonel," he told his logistics officer, who seemed much too young for the silver eagles on her shoulder boards. "Now how do we get there, Kurt?" He turned to his operations officer.
"The State Department guys are still twisting arms over some of the overflight rights, but it looks like we can do a Great Circle." That was the shortest and hence most economical route between any two points on the globe. "First stage: Mountain Home to Elmendorf, Alaska. If the weather permits, we can put some tankers at Shemya for refueling, but the ramp space there is tight. Second stage: Elmendorf to Yokota and Misawa, Japan. The Russians will let us base a squadron of ANG tankers at Petropavlovsk, as long as we buy the fuel from them and pay in hard currency. In emergencies they say we can divert to any of their fields in Kamchatka or Sakhalin. No diplomatic problem with Yokota and Misawa so far, but the Japs want us in and out fast, with no publicity. Third stage is Misawa to Taiwan. The ROC Air Force is rolling out the red carpet. We can use the civil airports at Taipei International, Tai Chung, Kao Hsiung, and all their military fields. No way to maintain OPSEC" — Operations Security—"on such short notice, but the ROCs will try to keep the media camera crews out of the landing patterns. The last stage gets complicated. We had planned on staging tankers out of Kai Tak Airport at Hong Kong; but the Chicoms said, not just no, but Hell, NO! Seems they don't ever want to be accused of a stab in the back, like Poles accused the Russians back in '39. So, we have to pre-position tankers at Manila, Kota Kinbalu in Malaysia, and Brunei. The Filipinos are gouging us for landing rights, so we can't count on Manila. We can get some Australian tanker support out of Singapore, but we're still working on how much."
The general nodded. Good staff work on short notice. His scarred index finger traced a line on the map, skirting the Chinese mainland air-defense buffer zone. "How about a shortcut across Vietnam?" he said, with a wicked grin.
"No way, sir. That's not the way we've trained to deploy," the ops officer said with an answering smile. "By that point our crews will be tired, and we don't want to risk tangling with their air defenses before we've had a chance to knock them down a little. It would be a bad start for the mission if we lost a few planes just to save a couple of hours' flight time."
The general reluctantly nodded. There was no point in staging another "Doolittle Raid" as a stunt. The way to win an air campaign was by the book.
Over the South China Sea, May 7, 2000, 1500 Hours
It had been a long trip, and double issues of "piddle packs" had been the order of the day. For the aircrews of the 366th's A+ Package on their way to Thailand, it had been a day of contrasts. From the desert of Idaho, to the cold mountains of Alaska, now down to the equatorial jungles. They had one more refueling to go in about an hour, and were looking forward to seeing the tankers. The eight F-15Es of the 391st TFS, in two four-ship formations spaced a few miles apart, were cruising southwest at their most economical speed and altitude, about 470 knots/859.5 kph. at 20,000 feet. The Strike Eagles were combat loaded with a mix of GBU-24 LGBs, AGM-65 Mavericks, GBU-15s, and three 630 gallon/2,377 liter fuel tanks, as well as the usual load of two AIM-120 and two AIM-9 air-to-air missiles. They were accompanied by eight F-16Cs of the 389th, each armed with a pair of AGM-88 HARM missiles, an AN/ASQ-213 HARM Targeting System (HTS) pod, an external ALQ- 131 jamming pod, two AIM-9s, two AIM-120s, and a pair of 370 gallon/1,396 liter fuel tanks. These two groups were being escorted by eight F-15Cs of the 390th FS, armed with a full load of four AIM-120 AMRAAM and four AIM-9 Sidewinder AAMs. These last were headed "downhill" to 18,000 feet/5,486 meters, where they would meet up with a pair of KC-10A tankers to top off for the final run into Thailand.
At the moment, each group was doing different things to prepare the aircraft for the planned embargo of the North, as well as staying ready for any trouble from the Vietnamese off to the west. The ROE were Warning Yellow — Weapons Hold, which allowed the fighters to defend themselves if they were threatened in any way. The UN resolution clearly allowed them to do so, though everyone in the formation was quietly hoping that this contingency would not involve any expenditure of ordnance or loss of life. The F-15Es were testing their LANTIRN targeting pods, and were using their APG-70 radars to shoot a series of radar maps to help with the target planning that was already going on in Fast-3, the command-and-control KC- 135R of the 22nd ARS, which was already coming in to land at U-Tapao. The F-15Cs were testing their JTIDS data links to make sure that they functioned as advertised. And the F-16Cs of the 389th were calibrating their HTS pods and Improved Data Modems (IDMs) on known SAM sites along the Vietnamese shore to their right. The F-16s were all "netted" together, and the leader of the second flight had just turned on his gun camera video recorder when the radar warning receiver began to bleep. "What the ****," Captain Julio "Frito" Salazar, lead pilot of the second flight of F-16s, said. "Somebody down there is tracking us!" The frigates Dau Tranh ("Struggle") and Giai Phong ("Liberation") were the pride of the Vietnamese Navy. Originally built for the Soviet KGB as heavily armed Krivak-III maritime patrol vessels, they had been acquired by Hanoi for little more than their scrap value and carefully refitted with French weapons systems and Japanese electronics, though they retained the twin ZIF-122/SA-N-4 Gecko missile launcher forward. The cost of maintaining the ships was high, but the Party leaders judged that the political cost of conceding control of the Gulf of Tonkin and the South China Sea was even higher. Following standing orders, the ships fired up their gas turbine engines and raced out to sea at the first sign of trouble, lest they be trapped in Haiphong harbor by mines. Rear Admiral Vu Hung Van, flying his flag in Dau Tranh, had mission orders to blockade the southern Vietnamese coast, isolating the rebels while the People's Army crushed them.
"Admiral, aircraft bearing thirty degrees, at least ten, maybe more, in tactical formation. Definitely not friendly. If they maintain course and speed they will be within missile range in about five minutes."
"That will be our old friends the Americans," said the admiral, as an enigmatic smile crossed his weather-beaten face. "Let us prepare to welcome them." CNN had provided live coverage of the first movements of the American aircraft, and he knew what was coming. He also knew his duty and orders, and punched the button on the console for General Quarters.
Things began to happen at electronic speeds, beyond the range of human reflexes. As the fire control computers on the Vietnamese frigates began to develop target solutions, they commanded the tracking radars to switch to a higher pulse rate. At the same moment, HTS pods on the F-16s immediately detected this ominous development and alerted the pilots flashing the code STA 8 in two spots in the corner of the digital display of their ALR-56M radar-warning receivers (RWRs). It also told them that the Pop Group fire control radars of the two ships were in a firing mode, ready to launch. Captain Salazar reacted quickly. He immediately called a warning to the other aircraft of the package, and began to rapidly move his fingers over the HOTAS controls on his control stick and throttle. As he did, he called to his wingman, 1st Lieutenant Jack "the Bear" Savage, to hit the northernmost target with his HARMS, while he took the southern one. The IDMs linked the data from the HTS pods, and in a matter of seconds both aircraft had range and bearing solutions to their targets. It took only a few seconds more for the two pilots to set up the HARM missiles and launch them. Then the pilots turned on their jamming pods, set up their countermeasures dispensers, and made ready to evade the SAMs of the two frigates.
Ten seconds after the General Quarters alarm sounded, four SA-N-4 Gecko/4K33 missiles rose from the ships, while the four HARM missiles descended from the planes. The range was down to 5 miles/8.2 km. as the 100mm gun turrets of the frigates began slewing toward the black specks in the clear tropical sky. Diving in at over 4,500 feet per second/1,372 meters per second, the HARMs won the race. The proximity fuzes det
onated above the ships, showering them with thousands of tungsten fragments and chunks of still-burning rocket motor fuel. Admiral Vu and his bridge crew were dead before they knew what had happened. The fragments from the HARMs' warheads virtually shredded the two frigates, starting fires in the forward weapons magazines of both ships, as well as rupturing the fuel tanks. The SA-N-4s, deprived of terminal guidance, followed a graceful ballistic arc until the fuzes timed out and they self-destructed.
The lead Strike Eagle had captured the whole engagement on the videotape recorder of his LANTIRN targeting pod. Two hours later, just a few minutes after he touched down in Thailand, the imagery of the first shots fired in what was now being called Operation Golden Gate was being relayed by satellite datalink to Washington. The good parts were rushed through declassification by a rather sharp Pentagon PAO, just in time to make the evening news. The Vietnamese would regret firing the first shots at the 366th. Giai Phong limped into Cam Ranh Bay, where the surviving crew mutinied and joined the rebellion. Dau Tranh blew up and sank when the fires reached the forward missile magazine. A Chinese freighter picked up the survivors a few days later. They were neither grateful for the rescue nor well treated by their rescuers.
Hanoi, Vietnam, May 7, 2000, 1500 Hours
The Military Committee of the Party had ordered all senior cadres to study diligently the lessons of the 1991 Gulf War. If the Americans, or even worse, the damned Chinese came again (they had attempted an invasion of Vietnam in 1979), the command-and-control centers of this nation would not be caught sitting around the capital waiting to be decapitated. The top-secret dispersal and evacuation plan was worked out in detail, but the details were changed at random intervals, and there were never any practice exercises, to reduce the risk that a high-level defection could fatally compromise the plan.
The first lesson of the 1991 Persian Gulf War for the leadership of bandit nations was that underground bunkers were a trap. They would be pinpointed by satellite reconnaissance, targeted, and smashed by precision-guided penetrating bombs. So the Party would take refuge in the vast network of natural caverns that abounded in the mountains north and west of the city. Centuries of bat droppings were cleared out, and carefully camouflaged remote antennas for French-built spread-spectrum cellular phone systems were installed; but otherwise, preparations were kept to a minimum, and no road construction was permitted in the vicinity of the cave entrances.
Following the incident between the frigates and the 366th's A+ Package, the UN Security Council voted another resolution, this one designating the Hanoi regime as an outlaw government and authorizing the use of force. When word of this was received from the Vietnamese delegation in New York, the leadership evacuation plan was activated. The plan was executed so smoothly that the foreign diplomatic and journalistic community in Hanoi never got a hint that anything was amiss until virtually the entire Party and Government structure had vanished from the city. Thus it came about that elderly members of the Central Committee found themselves being winched down in darkness from rickety old Mi-8 HIP helicopters through the forest canopy and into tiny clearings, where National Security Force guards led them to underground hideouts connected by comm links that were difficult to intercept and almost impossible to jam.
The White House, Washington, D.C., May 7, 2000, 1800 Hours
"Mitch, I'm going to have to fulfill a few legal obligations to make this enforcement business happen the way you and the UN Security Council want it done," the JCS Chairman said to the National Security Advisor in his office.
"What might those be, Jack?" the National Security Advisor asked coyly.
"I'm talking about assassination, Mitch. Not that it's illegal; but we do have to do some paperwork to make it all nice and okay. Especially the part about a signed Presidential National Security Finding showing that the continued existence of the Hanoi regime is a clear threat to the security and safety of the region," replied the annoyed JCS Chairman.
"Will this do?" said the NSC Advisor, handing the big Marine a leather binder with the seal of the President on it. The JCS Chairman looked it over carefully, taking his time as he flipped through the pages. He stopped abruptly when he reached the last page with the signature blocks.
"Nice touch having the Speaker of the House and the President Pro Tem of the Senate endorse it… makes it all nice and bipartisan," the general observed.
"We thought it would add a certain moral conviction to the effort, especially since most of the veterans killed at the Caravelle were from the senator's home state," replied the National Security Advisor. "It just took some time to staff it through the Justice Department and the UN Security Council. Everyone wants to keep this most nasty of actions as tidy as possible. If, of course, your folks at the 366th can make it happen."
The 366th Wing Tactical Operations Center, RTAFB U-Tapao, Thailand, May 8, 2000, 2200 Hours
"All right, Bob," Brigadier General Jack Perry, the 366th's commander and the resident JFACC of the UN-sponsored action, said, "give us a rundown on operations to date."
"Yes sir," the colonel commanding the Operations Center said. "We've been running no-fly operations in the southern part of Vietnam for two days now, and we seem to have things under control so far. The light grays" — F-15Cs—"from the 390th have gotten an even dozen MiG kills so far, and VNPAF air activity outside their borders has virtually ceased. Also, the movement of Vietnamese units and supplies from the north has slowed greatly, and they have a backup of trains going from Hue back through Thanh Hoa to Hanoi."
"How about troop movements headed south?" the commander asked.
"Well sir, that's not so good," the colonel observed. "Satellite photos show large formations of light troops moving south on foot, with most of them headed for Mu Gia Pass and the old Ho Chi Minh Trail routes. National estimates make their numbers at approximately fifty thousand, in four identifiable divisions. They appear to have nothing heavier than personal weapons, and there are very few vehicles supporting them. Looks like a modern-day version of the Long March. They'll be through the pass and on the trail in less than a week. After that, you're going to have one nasty civil war down south."
"Just wonderful!" observed General Perry. He then asked the logistics chief, "And what happy news do you have for me, Harry?"
Lieutenant Colonel Harry Carpenter looked down at the notes on his laptop computer and began to speak. "Sir, the last elements of the C-Package arrived this afternoon. The Bones from the 34th will start mining operations of all northern harbors, rivers, and estuaries tonight. It will take about two nights to get them closed off. The UN posted the warning to navigators right after the embargo resolution was passed, and Lloyds threatened to pull the coverage from any ship still in harbor after 0000 local time tonight. The B-1Bs will start laying the eggs around 0400 local tomorrow, with activation in forty-eight hours."
"How about escorts and ROE?" the general inquired.
"Per your orders, sir," the lieutenant colonel replied, "no bomber shall drop any mine without logging it with a PY-code GPS receiver supplying the position. Also, each B-1B will be escorted by an F-15C loaded for air superiority and an F-16C with HARMs and HTS for defense suppression, if required. For tonight at least, the dark grays over at the 391st will do the no-fly job for us until that's done." He took a long breath and continued. "As for supplies and reinforcements, there's good news coming. Our old friends, the 8th FS from the 49th Wing at Holloman AFB, have just arrived this evening with twelve F-117s to help out with our leadership hunting, should that work out. In addition, we've been getting little bits and pieces of other things, like two RC-135 Rivet Joints to help out with the SIGINT problem. We also got two more E-3Cs from Tinker, to help out the three we already have. The first of the French and British fighters will arrive in about six days, as soon as they can get their tanker support settled. As for logistics, the first of the propositioned ships will arrive tomorrow, so we can stop sweating ordnance and fuel supplies. The Alert Brigade of the 82nd Airbor
ne and 7th Marine Expeditionary Brigade are standing by to help with the peacekeeping duties, if there ever are any. They'll bring elements of MAW-3" — Marine Air Wing Three—"and the 23rd Wing at Pope AFB if they ever arrive." He gave a rueful smile at that, knowing that things were not going well in the area they were about to discuss.
"Okay, ladies and gentlemen," General Perry announced, "lets get down to cases. What the hell happened to the enemy leadership, our designated center of gravity? Where are our damned targets? I want some dammed DMPIs, and I want them now! I'm listening. I'm waiting for an answer." The young brigadier had been under heavy stress already, and was now seriously irritated by a stupid tropical rash he had picked up in this hellhole, by the disappearance of the North Vietnamese national leadership, and by the dumb stares of his bright young intelligence officers. Had he been more of a screamer, he might have enjoyed a late night snack of lieutenant's butt on rye. But now, all he wanted was a target set for his Strike Eagles to hit.